This year has not gone well online for some folks, as the problems with online privacy and data breaches have left millions of them burned – even by something as simple as a purchase from Home Depot. Because of this, today’s generation – slowly being dubbed “Generation Invisible” – are taking extra measures to assure their safety, according to Mediapost.
A recent survey from GlobalWebIndex, conducted across 32 countries, indicates that 58 percent of those polled show genuine concern about their personal privacy being invaded on the Internet – a figure that’s risen quite steadily since 2010.
As a result, more and more consumers are taking measures to assure that their information is safe, using safeguards and other steps to assure that other companies can’t easily obtain said information.
Three-quarters of online adults have reportedly deleted cookies off a website, for the main sake of them not being remembered, even when consistently revisited. That’s 40 percent overall of those polled. In addition, private browsing windows are on the rise, by nearly a 50 percent increase, and smaller services, like ad blocking (30 percent) and anti-tracking (20 percent) have also seen increased usage.
Also seeing extra usage as of late are Virtual Private Networks (VPNs for short) and Proxy Servers, enabling users to bypass traditional connections to use the Internet, via a remotely located server. Only 7.5 percent of those polled are using this method, but that’s still over 100 million individuals worldwide – and with things going the way they are, that number just might grow.
This could mean bad news for marketers in the long run, mainly because of the inability to get information for certain campaigns, and more actions being taken that could block certain advertising types.
Between deleted cookies, secure channels for surfing the web and other services assuring information can’t be so easily passed around, it could be an uphill struggle for online networks and marketers alike. Here’s hoping someone figures out a secure solution so everyone wins in the long run – and without losing their credit card number, at that…
